The Ancient Ones

Chapter 5: Ramses

     I had been sleeping in my brand new plush coffin that one of the newly turned vampire thralls had taken from the local funeral home. It was far more comfortable than the ones we had been laid to rest in all those centuries ago. To think, the modern age worried about the comfort of their dead, I guess they aren't as different from my era. That's what I had thought when I first laid in it. Above my coffin, hanging on the wall, was two paintings I had created. On the left was Aziza, my high priestess of Bastet, and my greatest love. On the right, was her reincarnation Celesta.

      Aziza was an Egyptian woman with black hair, as black as death itself, ever present, and luscious and yet so devoid of any life, or so it seemed. Her eyes were fierce, holding wisdom so far beyond her years, it was as if her eyes alone could suck you in and hold you there for all of eternity. She had a kind of sassy spark about her that most found made her unapproachable, but it made me want to get her all the more. The bronze of her skin seemed to glow, alive, as the golden headpiece sat atop her crown, adorning her silky black hair with the only bit of color her hair was unable to swallow. 

     Celesta was quite different. She had soft blond hair that glowed with a life equal to the flames of the sun protruding out into space, piercing the blackness and setting it alight. Her eyes were also fierce, but for a much different reason. There was a softness to her eyes that showed how kind she was, but the fierceness that lied behind them only shown when she fought for what she believed in. As a very vocal, opinionated woman, she fought quite often with her words. Though her skin was not the bronze of her previous body, but a soft cream color, almost as white as paper.  Still, the likeness between both women was unmistakable. Their skin colors may have changed, but their faces stayed the same. I would have recognized her even if I had been blinded. Her very soul exuded a golden aura around her body, enveloping it as if it were hugging her. 

     No amount of skill with a brush would ever be able to capture their personalities, nor would it ever be able to capture the warmth of her soul. Still, it was all I had to remember her by. Through the centuries I had never forgotten their faces, it was nice to see them with my own eyes, even if they weren't her true self. 

     My coffin laid with the head towards the door and my feet at the wall, so their portraits were always the first thing I saw every time I would awake. As I laid in my coffin, preparing to sleep for the day, I could not help but stare at their faces, lost in thought as my memories of them flooded my mind. Aziza with her cold attitude, though she always hid it, she loved being chased. Celesta's infectious laugh and the sheer brightness of her personality seemed to come alive the most when she was in her garden. Aziza's insatiable appetite for the male flesh called me to her bed in secret more often than my first wife did. The sheer need in her kisses and the desperation in her touch filled me with a feeling of being wanted and loved, which had since been lacking in my first marriage. Celesta pledged her body and soul to god, and as such, she wished to remain as pure as virgin snow, but her kisses were filled with a desire to break that vow. No matter how far we got between us, no matter how much she craved it, she always stopped it before things got too hot and heavy. That woman knew how to leave me wanting more. 

     "My lord." A voice broke the silence that had since fallen over my room. I blinked as I came back to the world around me. A world without them. "We have caught the Chosen One woman." He stated. 

     Hearing this, I rose out of my coffin, standing up in front of my paintings, taking one last look longingly at their beautiful faces. How many lives have you had without me being able to find you? I wondered in silence before I turned around to look at the thrall at my door. "Take me too her." I commanded as I stepped out from the coffin. The thrall nodded his head and turned to walk in the direction of the Chosen One woman. As we walked in silence, I wondered what kind of woman she was to be. As a Chosen One, she would always pose a threat to us, as her blood was able to seal us away, or worse. A Chosen One's blood differed between the person, as I had witnessed all those centuries ago before we had been sealed away. I had a chance to dispose of the greatest threat to us and I was not about to make the same mistake that Bones had before his untimely death. He should have saved the child and killed the mother like we had offered him, it would have been the smart decision. Instead he chose love. I silently wondered what kind of power this woman held for a man like Bones, who was power hungry and ambitious, to fall to his knees and try to sacrifice his child instead of the woman. 

     "We are here my lord." The thralls's voice broke my thoughts once more. I blinked as I came back to reality, watching as the thrall stepped aside from the closed door. I waved him off before I reached for the door knob.

     As soon as I opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit room, I saw a woman with hair like blood, pulling at her restraints, snarling and hissing at the slave women of Lady Bathory. Bathory stood at the front of the room fanning herself as she watched the display with such intrigue. Upon my entrance, Bathory put her fan down to her mid section, though she left it open. "My lord. We have brought the woman as you requested, though I think you will find this one is much more special than we had previously thought."

     "How so?" I asked. As soon as the words left my mouth, I watched Bathory close the distance between her and the woman on her knees. Bathory slid her fan under the woman's chin and lifted her head up for me to see. I felt my heart stop and the air catch in my throat. Through the red hair, I could see it, the fire in her eyes that burned brightly, the fierceness in them like a wild animal, glowed like burning coal. Though her hair covered most of her face from all the fighting, I could still see the facial features that haunted my dreams. Aziza. Her name flooded my brain in a single fluid moment. There was no mistaking her likeness, she looked exactly how I remembered her despite the hair and golden eyes, and better yet, she was a vampire like us. She's immortal.... The very thought filled me with greed as my one and only wish seemed much closer than it ever had before. I felt my body move before I ever had the thought, closing the distance between me and the woman who resembled Aziza so much. I felt myself sinking down on to one knee in front of her so we were at eye level. Had she been anyone else in the world, I would have strung them up and forced them to look at me, but for Aziza, I could not will myself to do such harsh things to her reincarnations vassal. "Woman, what is your name?"

     She spat in my face, her saliva caught in my eye and slid down my cheek slowly. She said nothing, she just glared at me, her eyes never wavering from my gaze. If her eyes were able to cut me, I had no doubt they would without hesitation. I touched my hand to my cheek, wiping away her saliva from my flesh, then rubbing it out from my eye. 

     "I see you have chosen hostility, understandably so. However, we are not above proper etiquette and manners. So, I will ask once again, what is your name?"

     "If its proper etiquette you wish to see, isn't it proper for you to tell me who you are first, since you kidnapped me?" Her voice was venomous like a cobra with its fangs bared and ready to strike. 

     I smirked for a moment, liking the fearlessness she was showing. "Indeed, you are quite right. Forgive me." I stood up straight and took a deep bow before her. "I am Rameses, Pharoh of ancient Egypt, ruler of the Ancient Ones and the very first vampire in existence." I stood up straight and stared down at her as I ran my fingers through my black hair. I dared not show her my true form, for if she turned enemy, she would be able to kill me. "Now it's your turn." 

     She stared at me for a long moment, as she internally decided whether or not to actually give me her true name. I could see the idea of giving an alias rolling around in her mind. "Reyn," she finally said, a little more composed than before. "My names Reyn." 

     "Ah, yes, Reyn, you were Bones's lover, were you not?"

     The very question seemed to anger her more than she had been before as she struggled against the restraints that were still being held tightly by Bathory's ladies. "Fuck you!" she hissed at me "I wasn't his lover, that asshole raped me and held a voodoo pregnancy ritual to kill me."

     "Tsk tsk tsk, he was actually saving you. He chose to sacrifice the child not you, you just almost didn't make it through the ritual."

     There was a darkness that filled her eyes that seemed to dim her gold in her iris. "He is a monster and you're no better for ordering him to do such despicable things." There was a growl that filled her statement that seemed to deepen with every word.

     "Actually, we didn't tell him to do those things. We actually told him to sacrifice you for it was just your blood we needed to resurrect us. He chose the child as the sacrifice instead." I lied. what had actually happened was, we had given him the choice to choose who he saved, for the child of two vampires, one of Chosen One blood and the other bearing remnants of Ancient blood, proved to be greatly hazardous to our resurrection.

     "How are you even awake then? Our child still lives!" She snapped exposing her fangs to me in anger. 

     The child lives... that could be problematic. "It would appear that we did not need all of your blood, or all the blood of the other Chosen One. That was an error we had not foreseen, and for that I deeply apologize."

     "My Lord?" Bathory looked at me astounded. The look in her eyes suggested both worry and held some kind of accusatory thought. "Why are you apologizing to the prisoner?"

     I looked to her, and for the first time in a very long time, I forgot she had been present during this whole ordeal. The gaze she was giving me, I didn't like it. I could see the thoughts floating around behind her eyes. She was second guessing my intentions. I could see it clear as day. "That will be enough for today." I stated, composing myself once more. "Chain her up, and starve her of blood." I commanded Bathory's ladies, though, much to my bewilderment, I seemed to have forgotten they only take orders from her. It dawned on me about this when I saw them all stand there staring at me as if I had said nothing at all. I looked to Bathory and arched my brow at her. 

     She sighed, defeated, and ordered her ladies to follow my instructions. She then followed me out of the room. Once the door was shut she gripped my wrist, halting me in place. "What was all that?" She questioned with her sharp gaze. 

     "I do not know what you mean." I pulled my wrist from her grip, arching my brow higher at the blatant disrespect she had just showed me by touching me. 

     "Don't give me that Rameses." She hissed. "I know she looks like Celesta, but she's not her."

     "But she is." I stated in her face for a moment before I turned and walked down the way I had come. 

     "How?! Celesta died centuries ago! Do you even know how crazy that sounds?"

     "About as crazy as vampires walking around in modern day New York." I retorted agitation growing in my tone. "Reincarnation isn't the craziest thing out there Bathory."

     "Reincarnation doesn't exist!"

     I spun around and back handed her clear across her cheek, knocking her to the ground at my feet, feeling the sting of her flesh against mine from the impact. "Reincarnation does exist." I hissed. "Celesta is proof of that. So is this woman. If you can't see that, then you're even more small minded than I pegged you to be." My fangs had since protruded from my gums as I spoke with rage in my eyes. How dare she declare such blasphemous things. Without a second thought, I spun back around and continued on to my room. "Round up the other ancients, I want a meeting at dusk." I stated, noticing the colors filling the sky through the windows, the hues of pink and dashes of gold and purple filled the sky, coloring the clouds like puffs of cotton candy. 

     Once I was in my room, I shut the door and pressed my back to the door. In the darkness of my room, I could see the eyes of the portraits of my past loves staring at me with my vampire eyes. Though they could not change their appearance or the expressions they were painted as, I could feel some form of judgement seeping from their eyes as they stared at me. i felt my back lift off the door as my legs crossed the room towards their paintings. "Do not worry my love." I spoke to the Aziza painting, lifting my hand up to run my fingers gently down her cheek. "I will bring you back. You will be immortal and you will walk the ages with me. We shall never part ever again." My eyes shifted to Celesta. It was in her eyes I could see the angel in her soul come to life. "I know it's wrong, but how am I supposed to live through the ages, constantly watching you die? There's no life without you. Every time you die, I feel what little soul I have left, abandon me and follow you to the after life. If I am to live for all eternity, then I shall not do so without you by my side." My eyes shifted back to Aziza, she was like the devil on my shoulder, convincing me to do things that would excite her, all the while I disassociate and fade into the darkness surrounding me. I sighed and turned towards my coffin. I bent down and reached down under the plush inside of my coffin. There, under the foot area, I gripped a book hidden away from sight. The book was a book bound by leather, clearly it was a more modern addition to the book itself. As I opened the book to study the pages, the pages themselves were also new, but the hieroglyphs on the pages were old, very old. The humans had taken pictures of the pages of the book of the dead and put them into this book. The papyrus the hieroglyphs were originally transcribed on, were much too frail after all these centuries. The pages themselves could not be handled by just any hands as the pages themselves would surely crumble to the touch. As my eyes scanned the pages of the book, I searched for the spell I would need for the ritual that was to come, taking note of the words I would need to say and the items that were required for the ritual to work. I will bring you back my love, if it's the last thing I do. she will give herself to me, and she will do it willingly.